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Bulletin Board

WATER PAID TO KEEP THE LIGHTS ON in California this spring. Under the Governor’s emergency order, $440 million promised in the 2000-01 budget to the Department Water Resources’ flood control account, the Colorado River Project, and CALFED’s environmental water account and local assistance grants for water efficiency programs was "temporarily redirected," according to the Department’s Lucinda Chipponeri. Though the move set off panic waves about whether CALFED, in its first year of implementation, would hit the ground crawling, rather than running, CALFED’s Patrick Wright is confident of getting the money "out of limbo and back in the bank." (CALFED is a state and federal effort to balance the water needs of fish, farms and cities.) This March, a bill (SB23) certifying that programs and projects selected by CALFED are consistent with its EIS/EIR, and thus legitimizing the budget expenditures, passed through two important committees. At press time, CALFED was expected to get its money back via a new bridge loan program reimbursing general funds redirected to the power crisis. By the time the money gets to CALFED, Chipponeri expects to have reviewed most applications for water use efficiency grants, and to be able to fund selected projects "without skipping a beat." On the federal side, CALFED was one of very few programs actually mentioned by name in President Bush’s new budget. Contact: Pete Weisser (916)653-7431

NEW PUBLIC ACCESS POLICIES — largely designed to minimize the disturbance of sensitive birds and beasts on the Bay shoreline by humans jogging, biking or passing by — were approved by S.F. Bay Conservation and Development Commission on March 15. Public comments on the draft policy, released in December as a proposed S.F. Bay Plan amendment, resulted in clarifications addressing everything from a perceived "negative tone" about the region’s growing need for more public access to regulatory definitions of "adverse" versus "detrimental" effects on wildlife. "In the nutshell, these policies document a consistent, step-by-step approach for evaluating, and addressing, potential adverse effects on wildlife from public access on a case-by-case basis," says BCDC’s Caitlin Sweeney. Next steps will include a revision to BCDC’s 1985 Public Access Design Guidelines to include information on specific siting, design and management strategies to protect wildlife. Contact: (415)352-3600.

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